


Impromptu Zoology

by icarus_chained



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alliances, Comrades in Arms, Courage, Ficlet Collection, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fic, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waldo Butters. Shark, Zebra, Orang-utan, Meerket, Jaguar. The zoology of survival, in a world of monsters. (5 ficlets).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impromptu Zoology

**Author's Note:**

> Set roughly in the period between _Changes_ and _Cold Days_ (which I haven't read yet). The third ficlet references the Librarian from Discworld, while the fourth and fifth ficlets reference the events of my story [Drumbeat in Tribute](http://archiveofourown.org/works/683096).

**Shark**

Sharks circling, Waldo thought sometimes. Seeing the evidence of the various supernatural flare-ups across the city wash up on his slab, the dead of a thousand tiny conflicts and, perhaps, one larger, overarching one. There were sharks circling out there, and there wasn't that much he could do about it.

Except try not to bleed, maybe. You had to swim, because otherwise you'd drown. And not everybody could be a fighter. But you could, at the very least, take some precautions, invest in chalk and kevlar, and try not to bleed at inopportune moments. And maybe keep some other people from bleeding too.

It wasn't much, maybe, but it was something, and hell if he was going to be sharkbait before he could help it.

 

**Zebra**

"Look, just trust me," he told Molly impatiently. "It looks ridiculous, but it _works_ , okay?"

And wasn't that, in its own way, sort of his motto in life? Waldo ducked his head to cover the thought, smiling faintly to himself. Story of his life, that. Jury-rigged and knocked together, five foot nothing, a one-man polka suit held together with spit and duct tape, a chalk circle against the apocalypse. 

Like zebras, maybe. A camouflage in striped black-and-white against a golden savannah, but get a herd together, and hell if it didn't do the job when the lions showed up.

He looked up at her, her tired, skeptical expression, and smiled crookedly. "It'll work," he told her gently, trying to put that strange, wry confidence together for her. "Trust me. This part I'm good at." 

And she smiled at him, someone else jury-rigged against the night, and it was times like this Waldo thought this herd might just make it out.

 

**Orang-utan**

Knowledge is power, Harry'd told him once. And Bob, Bob had _shown_ him, rather emphatically, what power knowledge could be. Magic was fine, and faith was fine, and force was fine, and there were a thousand means to fight in the universe, a thousand powers and a thousand paths to them. But all of them, in the end, required some form of knowledge to get there, to use or to invoke or simply to know existed. Knowledge, at the end of the day, was power.

All the magic in the world couldn't help a sorceror once you'd shattered his anterior cruciate ligament. A stick of chalk in the hands of someone who knew how to use it could hold off an apocalypse. A kevlar vest that your enemy didn't know was there could mean the difference between life and death.

And a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of theory and some tools and some courage, could let a skinny little medical examiner stay alive.

Though really, he thought, darting around the second floor of the Harold Washington Library, slightly hysterically while the appropriate Discworld quote floated up in the back of his mind. Knowledge might be power, but the ability to turn into a 400 pound orang-utan that could punch out trolls would also be useful once in a while. 

 

**Meerkat**

"You know, a group of meerkats is called a mob or a gang."

Waldo, who had been busy crouching behind the examining slab while the three mobsters (well, two mobsters and a Valkyrie, technically) finished off the demon that had _followed them into his bay_ , stared up at the red-haired giant in bemusement. Hendricks grinned down at him, one hand held out to help him up.

"What?" Waldo asked, staring blankly. Though he took the hand, since it was being offered, and climbed carefully to his feet. "What have meerkats got to do with anything?"

Hendricks smiled faintly, looking between Waldo, who was shaking but mostly in one piece, over to Marcone, who was also shaking, but surprisingly fine for a guy with a recently glued-together tentacle wound in his side.

"Sometimes," the mobster said gently, "a mob just means a group of people who work together against bigger predators. Don't you think?"

And Waldo, for whom an impromptu zoology/anthropology lesson in the wake of a demon attack was _not_ , any longer, the weirdest thing that might happen to him in a day, even if it was being given by Hendricks, just squinted skeptically, and didn't necessarily disagree.

 

**Jaguar**

"... Butters," Harry said slowly, leaning heavily against one wall and squinting warily at Hendricks, who looked back placidly, and Waldo himself, who was too busy cackling to himself to pay that much attention. "Why did a mobster just give you a set of car keys?"

"In payment," Hendricks answered, while Waldo turned Brzezinski's erstwhile key-ring over in his hands, and did a bit of an impromptu jig in delight. The huge mobster grinned faintly down at him. "A favour for services rendered, you might say."

Harry blinked slowly, almost dangerously, opening his mouth to maybe say something about mobs and favours and getting in over your head, but Waldo turned to him before he could get out more than a warning " _Cujo_..."

"Hey, Harry, you remember my boss? With the car, and the payoffs? The one we didn't really have time for, that time with the T-rex?" He grinned at Harry's slow blink, and held up the keys to a very nice Jaguar that was, as of yesterday, not a very nice Jaguar at all anymore. "Turns out, Valkyries are as good as dinosaurs, if you ask them nicely."

A very strange expression crossed Harry's face, at that, his mouth opening soundlessly, and Hendricks had started coughing for some reason behind him, but Waldo, for once, was too busy cheerfully wondering if he could incorporate the key-ring into his polka suit to be overly concerned.

There were days, he thought, when it was pretty good to be Chicago's resident supernatural coroner.


End file.
